news

It’s always interesting to read a foreign take on American news media – in this case, a brief Guardian bio of newly minted MSNBC host Rachel Maddow.

Interesting to me is that the article focuses on Rachel’s sexuality – she is gay, and has been out since age fifteen. Not surprising, considering it’s the Guardian. Yet, the revelation still holds some intrigue because:

(a) I had no idea she was a lesbian;

(b) My ignorance nonwithstanding, I don’t think this is a widely known fact in the US;

(c) Yet, clearly it’s known by the media- and political- establishment. is it a component of the “liberal” tag applied to her; and

(d) Rachel is rapidly achieving rating dominance; she has recently topped Larry King in her time slot. This makes her one of the most visible “out” personalities in the media, and from the article it sounds as though she’s more vocal about her sexuality than Anderson Cooper.

Lest it be overlooked, she also holds a doctorate in political science, specializing in AIDS and prison reform. Certainly not a lightweight coming from the world of sportscasting.

(Lest you mistakenly think that was a Palin joke, I’m actually refering to her sometimes-mentor Oblermann. As Palin jokes go it was way too easy.)

I think that presidential debates are crucial to our understanding of how we can use our votes to better this country.

I’ve been a supporter of both of these gentlemen at different points of this election cycle – I respect them both, but I also believe they’ve each made some grave mistakes. I can’t pretend to be actually “undecided,” since my lifelong commitment to women’s and civil rights clearly dictates my choice in their pairing, and because of that certainty I don’t know whose side I fall on a lot of the other major issues of this election.

Hopefully after the debates I’ll be able to make a more educated decision.

Ms. Couric says it best: experience vs. judgment. On this particular range of topics I think experience has the edge. My final tally is McCain 18, Obama 16. Though they were both credible, I’m not really seeing a benefit to voting Obama based on tonight’s performance.

As I’ve alluded to in recent posts, an interesting confluence of events has lead Elise and I to begin searching for our first house a full six months before we intended to undertake such a project.

As we both combed through our finances in anticipation of applying for pre-approval for a mortgage, a certain fact about the two of us became abundantly clear: we are living marginally.

That’s not the same as “living on the margins,” a phrase you might use to describe the forgotten Americans our politicians are currently busy vying over. We are hardly teetering the precipice of hopelessness and debt. Thank goodness.

Instead, what I mean to say is that our lives just don’t cost very much to live, and by extension we have assets but not much equity.

The cost of being us is marginal. We began our adult lives by leaving college with a manageable amount of personal debt. We haven’t owned a car in years, and don’t own our own home. We don’t have any children or pets, or other family members to support. We consume uncomplicated food, and not much of it. We have a finite collection of housewares and consumer electronics that we don’t frequently expand. I quite adamantly dislike vacations, and neither of us participate in a particularly costly hobby or habit aside from music, which is at times a second career.

Essentially, in any given month after rent, food, utilities, and student loans we’re in the clear.

If it sounds like a charmed existence, well, it is. We’re living risk-free. But, that comes with a downside that’s subtly dangerous: we’re naive about how much life costs, and we’re reticent to find out. We have no concept of car insurance or property taxes, or even of paying for parking or needing a lawnmower, and it would be easy to stay this way

Yet, we can’t stay this way if we want to become upwardly mobile adults. No risk, no reward.

Therein lies the thin line between living marginally and living in the margins. You must make the leap into adulthood just right or else you become a forgotten American. You wind up making an effort to make ends meet, and tying up your entire livelihood in the upkeep one major asset – your home – living in fear that its value might drop out from under you. And if the bottom falls out from under your life you don’t just become forgotten – you disappear completely.

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We had to be cajoled into applying for our pre-approval, because we assumed we would be laughed out of the realitor’s office. We read the news – we knew about how bottom fell out of the mortgage industry, taking thousands of forgotten Americans with it. We didn’t think we had a hope.

Well, owing to living marginally, we did; though we don’t have any equity, we don’t have any bad credit either. In the mind of a reeling industry we still represent a good risk – a possible reward.

For a few weeks the potential mortgage check in my pocket made me feel immune to any financial woes. But, now that the euphoria has worn off the sticker shock is settling in.

Can we afford the homeowner’s life? Are we equipped to go from marginal to mobile without falling into the margins?

While I don’t think we will become invisible or disappear completely, both outcomes now loom tangibly, if remotely, over our house hunting. I’ve been invisible before, when I was a child visiting the corner store with a fist full of food stamps. The prospect of returning there – no matter how incredibly remote and unlikely, sets my stomach to roiling.

Life without risk may not be rewarding, but at least it’s comfortable.

I do feel a certain amount of restraint is due on this matter. Obama himself yesterday reminded the press that family is off limits. It wouldn’t be fair to make Bristol the focus of partisan crossfire, nor is her pregnancy a reason to assail the personal family values of her mother.

What we should not be restraining ourselves on is how Bristol’s pregnancy pertains to actual campaign issues, and to the poor political judgment of her mother Sarah Palin and her partner John McCain.

Make no mistake – Sarah Palin is a woman, but she does not support women. She does not support their right to choose, and furthermore she is a figurehead in a party that largely supports abstinence-only sexual education – something that Pennsylvania’s typically beloved governor Ed Rendell just accepted funding for on the state level.

However, allow me to state it based on the fact that I was a peer educator for four very defining years of my life – high school.

In those four years I believed, practiced, and taught that abstinence was the best possible decision for a high school student when it came to sex. However, I also believed and taught that abstinence is not the only option, just like pregnancy doesn’t only result from missionary position vaginal intercourse.

Teenagers don’t come pre-equipped with this information. Someone needs to communicate it to them, or else they wind up as misinformed adults who think the withdrawal method is a valid way to protect themselves from pregnancy and disease, or who think they can’t get pregnant if they have sex just before or during or after their period, or who don’t realize that mutual masturbation or trading oral sex can deliver sperm just as effectively as intercourse, or who can’t recite that the four bodily fluids that transmit HIV are blood, semen, vaginal fluid, and breast milk.

That’s why teens need sex education, and why the best sex education is often supported by peer education. Peers are not afraid to talk about condoms, whether it’s how to put them on or how they feel. They are are not afraid to disclose facts that parents don’t know or are afraid to admit: that sex is about a lot more than intercourse, and that teens can abstain from any or all of it while still developing and affirming their sexual identity.

Many teens are put in the position where their abstinence is no longer an option, let alone their best or only option. That situation is different for each teen, and it’s not the place of the mainstream media or political bloggers to contemplate what that situation was for Bristol Palin.

However, if all teens – Bristol included – received education on contraceptives that was supported by their peers and parents, they could be better protected from pregnancy, and from the risk of disease.

And, let me ask you, how would this be playing out differently if the headlines blared, “Bristol Palin: HIV Positive”?

That’s just as likely a result not only of her actions, but of the ignorance of her mother and the Republican party. Birth control is not just about birth. Pharmaceutical birth control is about regulating the body, and physical barrier protection is about just that – protecting yourself.

Sarah Palin does not care about any of that, and by extension, neither does the Republican party.

This dissonance is an example of the ultimate failure of the GOP – how they barely practice what they preach, and even in practice the preaching tends to fail. And it’s a single issue indicative of all the reasons McCain and Palin are the wrong choice to lead our nation.

Forget Bristol. Forget, even, that Palin is pro-life, as that is an issue equal parts personal and political.

Remember that in Sarah Palin’s opinion the message written on my door last month – the cat shit shoved into my home – was motivated by normal hate. And so was the deaths of Matthew Sheppard and Larry King. Not hate based on bias, on fear, on lack of acceptance. Not hate that requires specific regulation and punishment to dissuade others from acting on it. Just regular, run-of-the-mill hate that wasn’t meant to threaten me based upon my identity, real or assumed.

Sarah Palin doesn’t care about women, teenagers, or our planet. And she doesn’t care about me.

A vote for John McCain is a vote that endorses all of those positions – the policies of a party that’s no longer just assaulting logic, but outright denying it.

Bristol Palin is just one small example – teach abstinence, knowing that isn’t effective but claiming that it’s more moral, and when the teaching (and the associated morals) fail convert that failure into success by endorsing the family values that will raise and love that unplanned baby, and support that unwed mother.

Nevermind that not every young mother in the nation has a determined state governor for a mom. Nevermind that for every potential baby there is also potential for another life marked by HIV. Nevermind the implicit failure of abstinence-based education in the very home of the potential Vice President who supports it.

Nevermind?

No.

And that is why we cannot and will not restrain ourselves.

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(A big thank you to Five Thirty Eight for planting this kernel, and for many of the links.)

The concept fascinates me. Here we are on the internet, sending each other mp3s and photos and links to porn while we burn through our fossil fuels keeping us alternatingly warm and cold, and somewhere out there people are still living the lives they’ve lead for centuries.

Unsurprisingly, they all seem to be staring at the airplane taking their photos. Way to obey the prime directive, photographers.

I’ve been reading a lot of Huffington Post to stay up-to-date on the election cycle, although I often find myself the most intrigued by their non-election content.

This week Larisa Alexandrovna brought to light that a seemingly benign broadcast blackout of 60 Minutes in Alabama last week was likely connected to a shockingly Soviet attempt by the Republications to keep former governor Don Siegelman out of the sight and mind of his former electorate – a campaign that has lead to an election slimly lost by recount and a suspect conviction that has lead to his imprisonment.

It sounds too outlandish to be true, but the most disturbing part is that once you delve beneath the surface of the story the details of Republican opposition and flawed justice get even more incredible. For the background on Siegelman’s story, and it’s disturbing connection to Rove’s tenure in the White House, please see Larisa’s summary on alterna-news site The Raw Story. (Or, read her series, The Permanent Republican Majority: 1, 2, & 3).

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